


studiosa

by Siria



Series: supervixi [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 03:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1842820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia had never done well with the unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	studiosa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mir8lle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mir8lle/gifts).



> Written to a prompt by mir8lle. Thanks to Sheafrotherdon for betaing.

Lydia met regularly with Morrell, and when she had exhausted all the information that Morrell could, or would, give her, Lydia extorted the names of several European contacts from her. 

"Normally, I don't like being this crude," Lydia said, legs primly crossed at the ankles, chin tilted pugnaciously upwards. "And it's true that I don't actually have any proof I can give to the school's administration, but they're legally required to take student complains about dereliction of duty seriously. And no matter how unfounded my claim might be, these things tend to draw attention. I have the feeling exposure is something you like to avoid."

The look Morrel gave her was tinged with the faintest hint of amusement; there was nothing in her posture that said she felt intimidated. Still, she took a piece of paper from a drawer and wrote, in enviably elegant cursive, three sets of names and addresses, two sets of names and e-mail addresses. 

"I can't promise that any of these people will talk to you, or that they'll be able to give you any more information than I already have," Morrell said as she folded the page in half and handed it over. "But they'll have more contacts among your people than I do."

Before last year, Lydia had thought of 'her people' as being common-or-garden WASPs who'd slowly migrated westward from New England over the past two centuries, leavened only with a dash of Irish and Italian along the way. The only vaguely colourful member of her family was her father's Aunt Marge, who'd abandoned her podiatrist husband for her much-younger pool boy and now taught Zumba in Boca Raton. Lydia found that more tacky than interesting. Given all that, finding out that she likely had several relations who lived beneath earthen burial mounds and made a career out of screaming to warn people of their impending death had been somewhat of a surprise. 

Lydia had never done well with the unexpected. She had mapped out her high school career with precision—do well enough in her classes to make the honor roll every semester, but not so well that she attracted undue attention which marked her out as non-normative; tick every box on the list of a successful high school experience, including Homecoming Queen and the acquisition of an aspirational boyfriend; ace every standardised test and scholarship application so that she could shake the dust of Beacon Hills from her feet and never look back as soon as she turned eighteen. 

And now this. 

Now the screaming, and the uncertainty, and the clawing fear that her worst nightmares would turn out to be prophecies. Now Jackson was gone and her best friend was dead and most of the student body skirted her warily in the hallways. What Morrell had told her had helped some, had stopped her from blinking back to consciousness in a grocery store parking lot, on a riverbank, in the alleyway behind the post office, but there were times when Lydia opened her mouth and was terrified that the words about to come out weren't the ones which she had intended to say. 

It was deeply irritating. Lydia doubted that many peer-reviewed statistical analyses had been carried out on the subject, but it was unlikely that many banshees with only a tenuous grasp of their abilities went on to win the Fields Medal. 

When she got home that evening, Lydia sent off two measured emails, wrote three carefully-worded letters on crisp stationery in her best handwriting. 

A month passed before she heard back from anyone; a month during which Stiles huffed and suggested that maybe cutting back on caffeine might make her less, you know, _snippy_ , and they got into an argument heated enough that Derek ended up dragging them both out of Starbucks by the arm. 

"If you two keep acting like this," Derek said, arms folded, once they were out in the parking lot, "you're going to attract attention. Attention means people poking around. If we want to be able to live around here without—"

"Forgive me if the pinnacle of my ambition isn't getting to stay in an inconsequential life in a hick town where my life is constantly endangered for reasons which no one will fully explain to me," Lydia hissed. It was all she could do not to stamp her heel against the asphalt. 

Stiles looked mutinous; Derek blanched. 

"Forget it," Lydia said, and stalked back into the coffee shop to pick up her quadruple shot latte. 

The letter, when it arrived, was in a thick white envelope. At first, Lydia thought it was another college admissions packet, but then she saw the Irish stamp and hurried up to her room to open it. She read it all the way through, and then again slower, and then a third time while taking notes. It was like solving a tough math problem, feeling each piece of information click into place in her mind with a kind of inexorable rightness. Lydia would have to verify all of it before she accepted, of course, run the names mentioned by Morrell and Deaton to make sure this wasn't an elaborate trap. She'd have to forego MIT and Stanford, or at least postpone them for now; she'd have to persuade her parents that a year in Europe was a good idea. 

But the letter promised her further answers, and training, and a chance at marrying what she could do with what she wanted to do. In a stranger's sprawling handwriting, Lydia saw the opportunity to never again be made someone else's weapon, to never again have to sleep-walk through her own life. 

Once in ninth grade, Lydia had dutifully tagged along to a family picnic organised by her father's company—this was back when her parents were still pretending they could stand to share a bedroom and thought they had her fooled. She'd overheard one of the executive wives refer to her as such a pretty little thing, but so _bossy_ , men never did go for bossy women. 

Lydia knew exactly what she wanted to go for. She sat at her desk, pulled out a fresh piece of writing paper and wrote in a hand that didn't tremble once: _I accept_.


End file.
